like I said, at least when the cuts finally effect the economy we will all be able to agree that cutting government spending hurts the economy though I when that happens you'll have an excuse on why it's not really due to cut in govt spending

Wrong again!

Cutting spending helps or hurts, DEPENDING on where the cuts are made. Obama doesn't want to take responsbility to make sure the adverse effects are minimized for one reason: He wants to blame the GOP for his failure of leadership.

He was given the authority to make sure that neither the "poor kid" nor the "disabled kid" would have any government funding cut from them. HE REJECTED IT!!

That tells me he doesn't care how much pain gets inflicted as long as he doesn't get the blame for it.

Do you need Lasix or something? I made it clear what Obama said. I quoted the guy, in fact.

Wrong again!

Cutting spending helps or hurts, DEPENDING on where the cuts are made. Obama doesn't want to take responsbility to make sure the adverse effects are minimized for one reason: He wants to blame the GOP for his failure of leadership.

He was given the authority to make sure that neither the "poor kid" nor the "disabled kid" would have any government funding cut from them. HE REJECTED IT!!

That tells me he doesn't care how much pain gets inflicted as long as he doesn't get the blame for it.

feel free to show actual proof of your claims above regarding cuts

btw - I assume since there has been no reported economic damage in last last 4 days that you believe therefore there will be no negative effects on the economy (of course we'll ignore the fact that all economic indicator are historical references by prior months or quarters)

If there have been no "lice, boils, pestilence, or slaying of the firstborn" in the first 4 days then there will obviously be no impact

was that what your joke was meant to imply (btw - I'm not a bible guy like you are so I'm curious is that how the apocalyse is described in the bible)

are you sure there have been no lice, boils or slaying of first born children in the last 4 days?

btw - I assume since there has been no reported economic damage in last last 4 days that you believe therefore there will be no negative effects on the economy (of course we'll ignore the fact that all economic indicator are historical references by prior months or quarters)

If there have been no "lice, boils, pestilence, or slaying of the firstborn" in the first 4 days then there will obviously be no impact

was that what your joke was meant to imply (btw - I'm not a bible guy like you are so I'm curious is that how the apocalyse is described in the bible)

NOPE!! What you missed in all of this is the obvious fact that my statements (and others) are shots at Obama and his administration, failing miserably at trying to get the GOP to cave into stopping the sequester and giving them another tax hike.

Obama looks like absolute shit in this because its his plan, he threatened to veto any changes to it, then fear mongered as if a biblical catastrophe were upon us, and now nothing at all changes but his excuses.

NOPE!! What you missed in all of this is the obvious fact that my statements (and others) are shots at Obama and his administration, failing miserably at trying to get the GOP to cave into stopping the sequester and giving them another tax hike.

Not that I've seen and my kids are still alive, well, and boil-free.

But, why tempt fate. If you'llexcuse me, I have some Angle-of-Death prevention to do.

Honey, pass the lamb's blood, please!!

so I guess if no boils or lice on your kids = no apocalyse = no negative impact from spending cuts

is that about how the thought process bubbled up in your head

btw - do you think Obama should take the Repubs offer to control the spending cuts

Isn't it Congress's job to control the "purse strings"

do you see any downside for Obama if he accepts the responsibility for their job?

Obama looks like absolute shit in this because its his plan, he threatened to veto any changes to it, then fear mongered as if a biblical catastrophe were upon us, and now nothing at all changes but his excuses.

Yes he does....BUT....

Nobody wants furloughed Federal workers.

Now I know that's self-serving, but the everybody who was around the last time it happened is telling me that when they finally got things hammered out, they got paid for that time anyway.

Meaning...it's a free vacation....or should I say could be.

I understand it's a different time and political climate...but you don't risk the chance of that happening again.

Maxine Waters:“Yesterday we did have Mr. Bernanke and our committee, and he came to tell us what he’s doing with quantitative easing and that is trying to stimulate the economy with the bond purchases that he’s been doing because he’s trying to keep the interest rates low and create jobs. And he said that if sequestration takes place, that’s going to be a great setback. We don’t need to be having something like sequestration to cause these job losses. Over 170 million jobs that could be lost.”

Maxine Waters:“Yesterday we did have Mr. Bernanke and our committee, and he came to tell us what he’s doing with quantitative easing and that is trying to stimulate the economy with the bond purchases that he’s been doing because he’s trying to keep the interest rates low and create jobs. And he said that if sequestration takes place, that’s going to be a great setback. We don’t need to be having something like sequestration to cause these job losses. Over 170 million jobs that could be lost.”

This proves that she and her fellow Congressmen have absolutely zero clue about what is really going on with the economy, jobs and this nations finances. Zero clue, there isn't an actual informed thought in her head about these things.

Reading the bold portion of the quote makes me think of a 5 year old child asking their parents about where babies come from or a child going home after school and trying to explain something very simple they learned at school:

-"Uh, momma, Mr. Teacher told us today that, uh, uh, butterflies are really, just, caterpillers that go into these things called, uh, cacoo-somethings and then they, BOOM, come out and are butterflies! yeah!"

Feds keep hiring with sequesters in place: 400 jobs posted on first day back

The sequester cuts are now officially in place, but many government agencies appear to be hiring freely anyway.

The U.S. Forest Service on Monday posted help-wanted ads for a few good men and women to work as “recreation aides” this summer, the Internal Revenue Service advertised for an office secretary in Maryland, the U.S. Mint wanted 24 people to help press coins, and the Agriculture Department said it needs three “insect production workers” to help grow bollworms in Phoenix.

Monday marked the first regular workday under sequestration, and federal agencies posted more than 400 job ads by 6 p.m.

At a time when nearly all of those agencies are contemplating furloughs, the help-wanted ads raised questions about how agencies should decide between saving through attrition or letting people go.

“Every position you don’t fill that isn’t absolutely necessary is one less person that needs to be furloughed,” said Steve Ellis, vice president at Taxpayers for Common Sense — though he said some positions that people leave need to be filled in order to meet agencies’ core missions.

Part of the problem is it’s often unclear exactly what those core missions are, said Paul C. Light, a professor at New York University who has studied government organization extensively.

“When you say mission critical, it’s a phrase without meaning,” he said. “Everything’s mission critical. Therefore, we have no way of knowing what would be mission critical in a job description versus what is not.”

He said agencies become “very artful” in writing job descriptions to justify why they are hiring.

At the Homeland Security Department, which just days ago announced it was releasing some low-priority illegal immigrants from jails to await removal, the agency in charge of deportations advertised for an assistant to help with deportations.

The annual salary for the job is $60,765, enough to detain one immigrant for about 500 days.

An official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency is filling only mission-critical positions and may not end up hiring for every job it advertises.

The sequesters — $85 billion in spending cuts — were set into motion by the 2011 debt deal and imposed across-the-board cuts to most federal agencies. Social Security was spared, and other big entitlements such as Medicare face only minor trims.

Homeland Security officials warned that they would have to furlough airport screeners, and the Defense Department has canceled deployment of a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf region to save money.

But the Obama administration also faces a decision about how painful it wants the cuts to be. Ahead of the sequesters, when the White House was still hoping for a deal, officials painted the most dire picture possible. Now that the cuts are a reality, the administration must grapple with the possible downside of cutting something critical while spending on something that voters might see as less important.

When it comes to furloughs, Mr. Light, the NYU professor, said it would make sense to use job appraisals to decide which employees to furlough — except that the appraisals aren’t particularly useful anymore.

He said it makes more sense to furlough senior managers and those near retirement, while keeping lower-level workers — those who are doing the enforcement or services such as air traffic controllers — on the job.

“What’s amazing to me about all this is you’ve got the furloughs going on in the agencies and they don’t seem to be linked to anything other than an across-the-board strategy,” Mr. Light said.

About a quarter of the job openings posted by Monday evening were in medical or public health, 67 were in management or clerical services, and another 21 were in information technology.

The Defense Department led the way with 123 jobs posted as of Monday evening, while the Department of Veterans Affairs was close behind with 119 jobs.

The Justice Department, which has issued furlough notices to 115,000 employees, had a handful of job openings, including one to hire “several” law librarians, with annual salaries up to $115,742, and another posting for a student intern to answer phone calls and sort documents for up to $18.97 an hour.

There was one opening for a professor at the Army War College in Pennsylvania, at a salary of up to $115,811 a year. A War College spokeswoman said the professor’s post was deemed critical for their academic mission.

The lowest-paying jobs were working at swimming pools, golf courses and bowling alleys on Army bases. Each of those began at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

An Army spokesman said those jobs are funded through fees paid to those facilities and don’t get taxpayer money.

But that explanation didn’t wash with some watchdogs.

“All money is fungible,” said John Hart, spokesman for Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican and Congress’s top waste-watcher. “Mobilizing our nation’s aircraft carriers seems to be a more pressing priority than mobilizing our nation’s taxpayer-funded bowling alleys. The administration’s refusal to set priorities continues to make a mockery of their doomsday predictions.”

Mr. Coburn last week called for the government to stop filling low-priority jobs, pointing out a number of openings such as a museum director and 10 new drivers for State Department cars.

The White House at first seemed cool to the idea, but then issued a memo urging offices to be careful about any hires they made. The White House budget office also warned against hiring outside contractors to try to make up for the lost work from federal employees.

The budget office didn’t return messages seeking comment Monday, nor did the U.S. Forest Service or the Army Corps of Engineers.

One decision agencies face is how to handle internships. A number of intern openings were posted Monday, with duties ranging from answering phones to taking part in intensive engineering programs.

The federal Office of Personnel Management said agencies are allowed to make all hiring decisions and furlough decisions and that includes hiring interns, which the office said “is still an important part of an agency meeting its mission.”

I'm curious how your brain decided that a democratically elected POTUS is a dictator

If you think he is a dictator then why is he not doing whatever he wants. Why is he not raising taxes for example. What kind of pussy dictator sits around trying to negotiate with ANYONE in his own country. What kind of dictator acts like that? Why not just take Boehner and McConnell out and have them shot and hang them from the flag pole in front of the White House

I'm curious how your brain decided that a democratically elected POTUS is a dictator

If you think he is a dictator then why is he not doing whatever he wants. Why is he not raising taxes for example. What kind of pussy dictator sits around trying to negotiate with ANYONE in his own country. What kind of dictator acts like that? Why not just take Boehner and McConnell out and have them shot and hang them from the flag pole in front of the White House

The Obama administration denied an appeal for flexibility in lessening the sequester’s effects, with an email this week appearing to show officials in Washington that because they already had promised the cuts would be devastating, they now have to follow through on that.

In the email sent Monday by Charles Brown, an official with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Brown asked “if there was any latitude” in how to spread the sequester cuts across the region to lessen the impacts on fish inspections.

He said he was discouraged by officials in Washington, who gave him this reply: “We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

“This email confirms what many Americans have suspected: The Obama administration is doing everything they can to make sure their worst predictions come true and to maximize the pain of the Sequester cuts for political gain,” said Rep. Tim Griffin, Arkansas Republican.

Mr. Brown, the official who sent the email and who is eastern regional director for wildlife services at APHIS, didn’t immediately return a call Tuesday afternoon seeking comment.

APHIS is an agency within the Agriculture Department, and on Tuesday department Secretary Tom Vilsack was challenged on the email at a House committee hearing by Rep. Kristi Noem, who said she hoped the department wouldn’t tie agencies’ hands.

Mr. Vilsack said he hadn’t seen the email, but said agencies are supposed to be trying to find ways to manage the impact of the cuts.

“If we have flexibility, we’re going to try to use it to make sure we use sequester in the most equitable and least disruptive way,” the secretary testified. “There are some circumstances, and we’ve talked a lot about the meat inspection, where we do not have that flexibility because there are so few accounts.”

The administration earlier had warned that supplies of beef, pork and poultry could drop this year because slaughterhouse inspectors will have to be furloughed, and under federal law meat can’t be processed without inspectors present.

Ms. Noem told Mr. Vilsack the email made it sound like the administration was sacrificing flexibility in order to justify dire predictions.

The $85 billion in sequesters began Friday, and have hit most of the federal government, where employees will face furloughs.

But even amid the cuts, APHIS is still hiring new employees and interns.

Since Sunday the agency has posted 24 help-wanted ads including 22 student internships, one ad seeking a clerk in a New York office, and one ad seeking three “insect production workers” to grow bollworms in Phoenix.

The Obama administration denied an appeal for flexibility in lessening the sequester’s effects, with an email this week appearing to show officials in Washington that because they already had promised the cuts would be devastating, they now have to follow through on that.

In the email sent Monday by Charles Brown, an official with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Brown asked “if there was any latitude” in how to spread the sequester cuts across the region to lessen the impacts on fish inspections.

He said he was discouraged by officials in Washington, who gave him this reply: “We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

“This email confirms what many Americans have suspected: The Obama administration is doing everything they can to make sure their worst predictions come true and to maximize the pain of the Sequester cuts for political gain,” said Rep. Tim Griffin, Arkansas Republican.

Mr. Brown, the official who sent the email and who is eastern regional director for wildlife services at APHIS, didn’t immediately return a call Tuesday afternoon seeking comment.

APHIS is an agency within the Agriculture Department, and on Tuesday department Secretary Tom Vilsack was challenged on the email at a House committee hearing by Rep. Kristi Noem, who said she hoped the department wouldn’t tie agencies’ hands.

Mr. Vilsack said he hadn’t seen the email, but said agencies are supposed to be trying to find ways to manage the impact of the cuts.

“If we have flexibility, we’re going to try to use it to make sure we use sequester in the most equitable and least disruptive way,” the secretary testified. “There are some circumstances, and we’ve talked a lot about the meat inspection, where we do not have that flexibility because there are so few accounts.”

The administration earlier had warned that supplies of beef, pork and poultry could drop this year because slaughterhouse inspectors will have to be furloughed, and under federal law meat can’t be processed without inspectors present.

Ms. Noem told Mr. Vilsack the email made it sound like the administration was sacrificing flexibility in order to justify dire predictions.

The $85 billion in sequesters began Friday, and have hit most of the federal government, where employees will face furloughs.

But even amid the cuts, APHIS is still hiring new employees and interns.

Since Sunday the agency has posted 24 help-wanted ads including 22 student internships, one ad seeking a clerk in a New York office, and one ad seeking three “insect production workers” to grow bollworms in Phoenix.

Last Friday’s press conference by Barack Obama marked the end of an era. It was March 1st, the day that the sequester was set to kick in, and the President had just come from a meeting with congressional leaders in the Oval Office. On the eve of previous fiscal deadlines, the White House and Congress often found a way to reach a deal, even if it was only a patchwork solution or a temporary fix. Not this time.

A deal on the sequester was never really possible. Back in January, in return for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling for a few months, conservative House Republicans demanded that their leaders, John Boehner and Eric Cantor, allow the trillion dollars of cuts in the sequester to take effect. The White House, which wanted additional revenue as part of the replacement for the sequester, saw the G.O.P.’s all-cuts approach as a nonstarter, which means that sequestration is likely here to stay. (I wrote about the House G.O.P.’s road to the sequester in an article about Cantor last week.) When one considers that the alternative scenario was for House Republicans to precipitate a government default and a potential global financial crisis, the sequester cuts and the estimated three-quarters of a million jobs that they will cost this year are not so bad.

At Obama’s press conference, after he explained the negative effects of sequestration, he cast blame on the Republicans, and a reporter challenged his analysis. “It sounds like you’re saying that this is a Republican problem and not one that you bear any responsibility for,” she said to the President.

Obama seemed taken aback. “Well, Julie, give me an example of what I might do.”

Obama’s slightly testy response is worth considering. I don’t remember a President ever publicly expressing a similar sentiment. All Presidents come to appreciate the limits of the power of their office, and there are reams of quotes from Presidents privately expressing disdain for Congress’s unwillingness to bend to their will. But rarely do they ventilate such thoughts in public.

A little later, Obama, using a reference from “Star Wars” (with some “Star Trek” mixed in), went even further, giving a short lesson on the separation of powers:

I know that this has been some of the conventional wisdom that’s been floating around Washington, that somehow, even though most people agree that I’m being reasonable, that most people agree I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow do a Jedi mind-meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right. Well, they’re elected. We have a constitutional system of government. The Speaker of the House and the leader of the Senate and all those folks have responsibilities….

This idea that somehow there’s a secret formula or secret sauce to get Speaker Boehner or Mitch McConnell to say, You know what, Mr. President, you’re right, we should close some tax loopholes for the well-off and well-connected in exchange for some serious entitlement reform and spending cuts of programs we don’t need. I think if there was a secret way to do that, I would have tried it. I would have done it.

The tendency of many Washington pundits, especially those who cover the White House, is to invest the Presidency with far more power that the Constitution gives it. The idea that the Presidency and Congress are co-equal branches of government is the most basic fact of our system, and yet it is often absent from political coverage of standoffs between the two branches. If only Obama would lead, this fiscal mess would be solved! If only he would socialize more with legislators the way L.B.J. did, his agenda would pass!

The pundits are not alone in assuming that the President is all-powerful. Indeed, the fact that Barack Obama now so appreciates the limits of his office and his lack of Jedi powers is rich with irony. As I’ve written about before, the premise of Obamaism— from his famous convention speech in 2004, through his primary challenge to Hillary Clinton, in 2008, right up until the later half of his first term—was that Obama was a politician uniquely suited to transform American politics by breaking through the polarization in Washington and bringing the two parties together.

Obama’s theme of post-partisanship and unity as a substitute for political ideology has always had its critics. Sean Wilentz, writing in The New Republic, in 2011, noted that Obama

had arrived on the national stage, after all, with his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 proclaiming that there was “not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the United States of America.”

As president, Obama would not only reach across the aisle, listen to the Republicans, and credit their good ideas, but also demonstrate that the division between the parties was exaggerated if not false, as many Americans, younger voters above all, fervently believed. Divisive and hot-tempered partisanship would give way to healing and temperate leadership, not least by means of Obama’s eloquence, rational policies, and good faith.

Needless to say, that didn’t happen. In reviewing the history of the politics of post-partisanship, Wilentz argues that Presidents who have used post-partisanship as merely a rhetorical device have been more successful than those who truly believed in the idea.

That Obama, who started his Presidency as a true believer, has now given up on the idea that he has any special powers to change the minds of his fiercest critics is probably a good thing. His devotion to post-partisan governance has long fed two mistaken ideas: that the differences between the parties are minor, and that divided government is inherently good for the country.

A fundamental fact of modern political life is that the only way to advance a coherent agenda in Washington is through partisan dominance. When Obama had large Democratic majorities in Congress during his first two years in office, he led one of the most successful legislative periods in modern history. After he lost the House, his agenda froze and the current status quo of serial fiscal crises began. Like it or not, for many years, Washington has been most productive when one party controlled both Congress and the White House.

The boring fact of our system is that congressional math is the best predictor of a President’s success. This idea is not nearly as sexy as the notion that great Presidents are great because they twist arms in backrooms and inspire the American people to rise up and force Congress to bend to their will. But even the Presidents who are remembered for their relentless congressional lobbying and socializing were more often than not successful for more mundane reasons—like arithmetic.

Lyndon Johnson’s celebrated legislative achievements were in reality only a function of the congressional election results—not his powers of persuasion. In 1965 and 1966, after the enormous Democratic gains of the 1964 election, Johnson was a towering figure who passed sweeping legislation. In 1967 and 1968, after he lost forty-eight Democrats in the House, he was a midget.

Each President is conflicted about how much to advertise the limits of his power. On one hand, pretending the office is more powerful than it is can have some benefits; in politics, perception is often reality. But, as Obama seems to have learned, reminding the public of the limits of the office can also help keep expectations more realistic.

Given all this, it’s depressing but not entirely surprising that there are already stories about the White House looking beyond the current Congress, and focussing on winning back the House in 2014, so that Obama’s last two years in office can be spent working with a Democratic majority. At his press conference on Friday, Obama hinted as much. He told reporters that while he can’t “force Congress to do the right thing,” perhaps “the American people may have the capacity to do that.”

“If we have flexibility, we’re going to try to use it to make sure we use sequester in the most equitable and least disruptive way,” the secretary testified. “There are some circumstances, and we’ve talked a lot about the meat inspection, where we do not have that flexibility because there are so few accounts.”

The administration earlier had warned that supplies of beef, pork and poultry could drop this year because slaughterhouse inspectors will have to be furloughed, and under federal law meat can’t be processed without inspectors present.

Ms. Noem told Mr. Vilsack the email made it sound like the administration was sacrificing flexibility in order to justify dire predictions.

The $85 billion in sequesters began Friday, and have hit most of the federal government, where employees will face furloughs.

But even amid the cuts, APHIS is still hiring new employees and interns.

Since Sunday the agency has posted 24 help-wanted ads including 22 student internships, one ad seeking a clerk in a New York office, and one ad seeking three “insect production workers” to grow bollworms in Phoenix.

Last Friday’s press conference by Barack Obama marked the end of an era. It was March 1st, the day that the sequester was set to kick in, and the President had just come from a meeting with congressional leaders in the Oval Office. On the eve of previous fiscal deadlines, the White House and Congress often found a way to reach a deal, even if it was only a patchwork solution or a temporary fix. Not this time.

A deal on the sequester was never really possible. Back in January, in return for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling for a few months, conservative House Republicans demanded that their leaders, John Boehner and Eric Cantor, allow the trillion dollars of cuts in the sequester to take effect. The White House, which wanted additional revenue as part of the replacement for the sequester, saw the G.O.P.’s all-cuts approach as a nonstarter, which means that sequestration is likely here to stay. (I wrote about the House G.O.P.’s road to the sequester in an article about Cantor last week.) When one considers that the alternative scenario was for House Republicans to precipitate a government default and a potential global financial crisis, the sequester cuts and the estimated three-quarters of a million jobs that they will cost this year are not so bad.

At Obama’s press conference, after he explained the negative effects of sequestration, he cast blame on the Republicans, and a reporter challenged his analysis. “It sounds like you’re saying that this is a Republican problem and not one that you bear any responsibility for,” she said to the President.

Obama seemed taken aback. “Well, Julie, give me an example of what I might do.”

Obama’s slightly testy response is worth considering. I don’t remember a President ever publicly expressing a similar sentiment. All Presidents come to appreciate the limits of the power of their office, and there are reams of quotes from Presidents privately expressing disdain for Congress’s unwillingness to bend to their will. But rarely do they ventilate such thoughts in public.

A little later, Obama, using a reference from “Star Wars” (with some “Star Trek” mixed in), went even further, giving a short lesson on the separation of powers:

I know that this has been some of the conventional wisdom that’s been floating around Washington, that somehow, even though most people agree that I’m being reasonable, that most people agree I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow do a Jedi mind-meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right. Well, they’re elected. We have a constitutional system of government. The Speaker of the House and the leader of the Senate and all those folks have responsibilities….

This idea that somehow there’s a secret formula or secret sauce to get Speaker Boehner or Mitch McConnell to say, You know what, Mr. President, you’re right, we should close some tax loopholes for the well-off and well-connected in exchange for some serious entitlement reform and spending cuts of programs we don’t need. I think if there was a secret way to do that, I would have tried it. I would have done it.

The tendency of many Washington pundits, especially those who cover the White House, is to invest the Presidency with far more power that the Constitution gives it. The idea that the Presidency and Congress are co-equal branches of government is the most basic fact of our system, and yet it is often absent from political coverage of standoffs between the two branches. If only Obama would lead, this fiscal mess would be solved! If only he would socialize more with legislators the way L.B.J. did, his agenda would pass!

The pundits are not alone in assuming that the President is all-powerful. Indeed, the fact that Barack Obama now so appreciates the limits of his office and his lack of Jedi powers is rich with irony. As I’ve written about before, the premise of Obamaism— from his famous convention speech in 2004, through his primary challenge to Hillary Clinton, in 2008, right up until the later half of his first term—was that Obama was a politician uniquely suited to transform American politics by breaking through the polarization in Washington and bringing the two parties together.

Obama’s theme of post-partisanship and unity as a substitute for political ideology has always had its critics. Sean Wilentz, writing in The New Republic, in 2011, noted that Obama

had arrived on the national stage, after all, with his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 proclaiming that there was “not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the United States of America.”

As president, Obama would not only reach across the aisle, listen to the Republicans, and credit their good ideas, but also demonstrate that the division between the parties was exaggerated if not false, as many Americans, younger voters above all, fervently believed. Divisive and hot-tempered partisanship would give way to healing and temperate leadership, not least by means of Obama’s eloquence, rational policies, and good faith.

Needless to say, that didn’t happen. In reviewing the history of the politics of post-partisanship, Wilentz argues that Presidents who have used post-partisanship as merely a rhetorical device have been more successful than those who truly believed in the idea.

That Obama, who started his Presidency as a true believer, has now given up on the idea that he has any special powers to change the minds of his fiercest critics is probably a good thing. His devotion to post-partisan governance has long fed two mistaken ideas: that the differences between the parties are minor, and that divided government is inherently good for the country.

A fundamental fact of modern political life is that the only way to advance a coherent agenda in Washington is through partisan dominance. When Obama had large Democratic majorities in Congress during his first two years in office, he led one of the most successful legislative periods in modern history. After he lost the House, his agenda froze and the current status quo of serial fiscal crises began. Like it or not, for many years, Washington has been most productive when one party controlled both Congress and the White House.

The boring fact of our system is that congressional math is the best predictor of a President’s success. This idea is not nearly as sexy as the notion that great Presidents are great because they twist arms in backrooms and inspire the American people to rise up and force Congress to bend to their will. But even the Presidents who are remembered for their relentless congressional lobbying and socializing were more often than not successful for more mundane reasons—like arithmetic.

Lyndon Johnson’s celebrated legislative achievements were in reality only a function of the congressional election results—not his powers of persuasion. In 1965 and 1966, after the enormous Democratic gains of the 1964 election, Johnson was a towering figure who passed sweeping legislation. In 1967 and 1968, after he lost forty-eight Democrats in the House, he was a midget.

Each President is conflicted about how much to advertise the limits of his power. On one hand, pretending the office is more powerful than it is can have some benefits; in politics, perception is often reality. But, as Obama seems to have learned, reminding the public of the limits of the office can also help keep expectations more realistic.

Given all this, it’s depressing but not entirely surprising that there are already stories about the White House looking beyond the current Congress, and focussing on winning back the House in 2014, so that Obama’s last two years in office can be spent working with a Democratic majority. At his press conference on Friday, Obama hinted as much. He told reporters that while he can’t “force Congress to do the right thing,” perhaps “the American people may have the capacity to do that.”

I'm curious how your brain decided that a democratically elected POTUS is a dictator

If you think he is a dictator then why is he not doing whatever he wants. Why is he not raising taxes for example. What kind of pussy dictator sits around trying to negotiate with ANYONE in his own country. What kind of dictator acts like that? Why not just take Boehner and McConnell out and have them shot and hang them from the flag pole in front of the White House